Late last night, waves spread across the gaming community when the notoriously litigious Nintendo finally took action against indie developer Pocketpair and its mega-hitPalworld, posting anannouncement of its bombshell lawsuiton its official site. The text of that announcement is as follows:
“Nintendo Co., Ltd. (HQ: Kyoto, Minami-ku, Japan; Representative Director and President: Shuntaro Furukawa, “Nintendo” hereafter), together with The Pokémon Company, filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court against Pocketpair, Inc. (HQ: 2-10-2 Higashigotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, “Defendant” hereafter) on June 15, 2025.
This lawsuit seeks an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights.
Nintendo will continue to take necessary actions against any infringement of its intellectual property rights including the Nintendo brand itself, to protect the intellectual properties it has worked hard to establish over the years.”
While more details of Nintendo’s lawsuit will surely emerge with time, we don’t know precisely what they are taking issue with just yet. Most would assume it has something to do with the character designs, but character designs can only be copyrighted, notpatented.Nintendo attacking the front of patents means there are likely components ofPalworld’s gameplay design that it thinks infringe onPokemon’s design.
Pocketpair also released a response earlier this morning on Twitter and its official website. Thisannouncementclarifies that Pocketpair does not yet know what patents it is accused of infringing upon withPalworldand restates Pocketpair’s long-term commitment to Palworld.
While it’s hard to say how this will pan out, Nintendo picking the patent angle is very interesting— mainly because Pokemon isn’t even the first monster-catching game series. It’s simply the most popular. For example, the more adultShin Megami Tenseiseries started four years before the launch of the firstPokemongame. While fans have been using character designs as a smoking gun in anti-Palworldarguments since the game came out, it seems Nintendo is taking a different angle entirely— one where they may havelessto stand on, depending on what patents in this subgenre of monster-collecting RPG it’s willing to fight in court to prove it owns.
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Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.
